Thank you to all the peo­ple who joined us on Octo­ber 25, 2014 at the Hall of Flow­ers (San Fran­cisco County Fair Build­ing) in Golden Gate Park for our annual cel­e­bra­tion The Fes­ti­val of Rock Posters with some of the most tal­ented artists around the coun­try, and across the pond!

This year was our best yet, with a record num­ber of vis­i­tors thanks to your par­tic­i­pa­tion! Thank you for com­ing out and sup­port­ing the arts.

We hope you enjoy these pic­tures taken at the event by Loretta Baraona.

Dates for the 2015 Hall of Flow­ers will (hope­fully) be announced soon! Watch this space for details or join our mail­ing list to stay in the loop. (sign up at the sidebar)

If you have any feed­back or com­ments about this year’s event, please send them to us using our con­tact page. Thank you!

When Art Rocked:

San Fran­cisco Music Posters 1966–1971

From 1966 to 1971, an unprece­dented quan­tity of extra­or­di­nary graphic art was pro­duced in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area. This resulted from the demand for posters, hand­bills, and fly­ers adver­tis­ing rock con­certs in San Fran­cisco. The two main patrons of this pro­lif­er­a­tion of posters were Bill Gra­ham — who pro­moted con­certs at the Fill­more and Chet Helms, leader of an orga­ni­za­tion called the Fam­ily Dog, which pro­duced con­certs at the Avalon Ballroom.

Poster artists were often inspired by Art Nou­veau mas­ters such as Alphonse Mucha whose blocky let­ter­ing was made psy­che­delic by Wes Wil­son. Alton Kel­ley and Stan­ley Mouse were fur­ther drawn to adver­tis­ing art and appro­pri­ated images. Mouse and a South­ern Cal­i­for­nia artist named Rick Grif­fin were also infat­u­ated with the art­work that grew out of hot-rod car cul­ture. Vic­tor Moscoso, on the other hand, cre­ated posters that nearly vibrated before the viewer’s eyes.

This exhi­bi­tion fea­tures over 150 posters cre­ated by these five artists along with many lesser-known artists who designed posters for shows at the Fill­more and Avalon fea­tur­ing bands such as the Grate­ful Dead, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, and the Thir­teenth Floor Elevators.

Guest cura­tor Ben Marks is the Senior Edi­tor of CollectorsWeekly.com and the Vice-President of The Rock Poster Soci­ety, whose mem­bers kindly loaned all of the posters, post­cards, hand­bills, tick­ets, and other ephemera for this exhibition.

When Art Rocked is located pre-security in the Inter­na­tional Ter­mi­nal Main Hall Depar­tures Lobby, San Fran­cisco Inter­na­tional Air­port. The exhi­bi­tion is on view to all Air­port vis­i­tors from Sep­tem­ber 29, 2014, to March 22, 2015. There is no charge to view the exhibition.

About SFO Museum

SFO Museum was estab­lished by the Air­port Com­mis­sion in 1980 for the pur­poses of human­iz­ing the Air­port envi­ron­ment, pro­vid­ing vis­i­bil­ity for the unique cul­tural life of San Fran­cisco, and pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tional ser­vices for the trav­el­ing pub­lic. The Museum was granted ini­tial accred­i­ta­tion from the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Muse­ums in 1999, reac­cred­ited in 2005, and has the dis­tinc­tion of being the only accred­ited museum in an air­port. Today, SFO Museum fea­tures twenty-five gal­leries through­out the Air­port ter­mi­nals dis­play­ing a rotat­ing sched­ule of art, his­tory, sci­ence, and cul­tural exhi­bi­tions, as well as the San Fran­cisco Air­port Com­mis­sion Avi­a­tion Library and Louis A. Turpen Avi­a­tion Museum, a per­ma­nent col­lec­tion ded­i­cated to the his­tory of com­mer­cial avi­a­tion. To browse cur­rent and past exhi­bi­tions, research our col­lec­tion, or for more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.flysfo.com/museum.

Car­olyn Ferris

Sur­real Imagery. Orig­i­nals. Rock Posters.

At the exhi­bi­tions, there will be an exclu­sive show­ing of the first-ever “singing can­vas”, Carolyn’s recently cre­ated 30 inch acrylic on can­vas which cor­re­lates to “Sil­ver Lin­ing”, song writ­ten by Roger McNamee. The can­vas, in turn, will be made into a Moon­al­ice poster which will be avail­able at their show at Don Quixote’s Music Hall in Fel­ton, Cal­i­for­nia on Decem­ber 19th, 2014